


The Shimmering Line

by Eva



Series: Here there be monsters. [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Creepy, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-15
Updated: 2011-10-15
Packaged: 2017-10-24 15:16:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/264950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eva/pseuds/Eva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lestrade is followed home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Shimmering Line

*********

“Did he have anything to say?” Greg asked Donovan when she got in, not twenty minutes after him, and she’d been in late, too. That probably put him on coffee duty.

“Who, sir? The parents?” Donovan pulled her hair back. “Not anything new.”

“No, the boyfriend,” Greg said, volume draining out of his voice even as he spoke.

“No boyfriend, sir. You been getting enough sleep?” With one half-concerned, half-annoyed glance, she strode off. Something silver in her hair. Calling card, maybe. Or an invitation.

At the very least, he had to get it off of her. After he put in for new handcuffs. Sherlock was always a good excuse.

He felt safe in the Yard. Always had. There was a surplus of reality (also bloody-mindedness, the mental equivalent of cast-iron) among police officers. A nasty little trick like that could be pulled outside, but that glint was nothing but a shiny little hello now. Greg let out a little sigh. Even Mycroft avoided the Yard, and he could work around iron.

Later, the silver scale would break apart in his fingertips, leaving him scrubbing with soap and salt for a full ten minutes.

*********

There was a particular path he took to work and home, worn into the world like a river. The path was familiar to him, but more importantly, he was familiar to it. He was expected. It brought a measure of protection.

His fingertips itched. He avoided a shimmer without thought.

“Consider,” said a man next to him, in almost a jovial tone. “I killed the girl. You don’t want to die.”

Greg didn’t look at him. Wrapped his itching fingers around the cuffs. “I’d like to live.”

“Of course you do,” the man said, and then the light changed. Greg spared a glance and saw him shake himself, look around, confusion writ in his face.

Lines like a web, and Greg walked over them or around them with grace, aware of something flitting through the eyes of people around him. Not so safe for it on the street; too much happening to control.

He wondered if it had followed him the other day, if Mycroft had put it off. Surely it already knew where he lived.

“You’re beautiful,” a young woman told him, her voice factual. “You’re a glass filled with light. She was a firefly compared to you.”

“So I’ll lose more than my eyes, then,” Greg said flatly.

She grinned widely. “Your eyes, hands, and heart. But you’re too smart to refuse me.”

His fingertips were burning, and he had to close his eyes to get over the next line. He stumbled, his foot catching for a moment on ground that wasn’t there.

“I’ve refused better than that,” he muttered.

“Of course. Something as pretty as you; why, you must’ve had beautiful offers, worded oh so sweetly, pure poetry. “ The man at the newsagent’s winked at him. “But we’re both plainspoken men, we are, and it all boils down to the same thing. Be mine, or else.”

Greg hurried on. The wind picked up and carried the scent of something foul. He was just outside his flat, on the street yet, when it appeared as the milk-white boy from before, though its arms were flecked with scales.

“All right. You’re jealous. But I don’t want them anymore. See?” It held out clawed hands, each cupping an eye in the palm. Sea-green and empty. Greg stopped, the sound of glass smashing in his ears. “You can have them.”

Staring at him. The burning in his fingers was like acid; he wanted to check that he still had skin, but he couldn’t stop staring back.

Oh Jesus; oh fuck. Her poor sweet eyes.

He couldn’t take them. He wasn’t so fucking green he didn’t know it was a trap. But he couldn’t just leave them in its hands. He wouldn’t have let so much as a bit of lint from her socks in its hands if he could help it.

“You can have them,” it said again, voice gentle and even sweet. “Come now.”

If the wind changed, he didn’t feel it, but the air was suddenly clear and fresh, brisk as autumn reaching for winter. “I should think that’s about enough,” Mycroft said mildly, and closed his cool hand around Greg’s, pressing around the cuffs.

And what he wanted to do was to hide his face against Mycroft’s neck and escape that blank, dead gaze; to just give it the fuck up because it was holding out her eyes like a box of fucking chocolates and he was going to leave them in its hands, no hope of forgiveness.

Then it was gone, and Mycroft was leading him up to his own door.

*********

Greg shook Mycroft loose just inside the door, turned, and locked it. Threw the bolt. Put his back to it and his hands to his face.

Tried to. “Not a good idea,” Mycroft said, catching the one that still burned, faintly.

“I washed it,” he said dully.

“You will have to do so again.” Mycroft examined his hand, frowning minutely. “There are, I see, roughly forty-three very small bits digging in through the skin.”

Ringing in his ears, and his knees almost gave way.

“Up, Gregory,” he heard Mycroft say distantly, and felt an arm around his shoulders, holding him up. He was propped up against the kitchen sink, Mycroft’s body along his front, and the water was running smooth and cold. He watched, the ringing still keeping sense away, as Mycroft stopped up the drain and put a hand to Greg’s chest, searching around the sink and closer cabinets.

“Darling, your salt and wires have wandered off,” he said at last. “Perhaps you have an idea where they might be.”

Greg blinked a few times. Grey was creeping around the edges of his vision. “Toolbox, under the sink. Um. And the bathroom.”

“In the meantime, then,” Mycroft said, and snapped a cuff neatly around Greg’s wrist. He affixed the other end to the faucet. “Don’t get it wet before I’ve added salt.”

Greg wanted to say “Yes, mum,” but he looked at his hand and swallowed hard. Forty-three pieces of that thing, working their way into him. He shut his eyes and leaned very heavily on the edge of the sink.

Mycroft was back quickly, pouring nearly the entire shaker into the water. Greg stirred it with his free hand, shivering at the cold, before letting his cuffed hand fall into it as far as he could.

“Move your leg,” Mycroft ordered, kneeling. He got out the toolbox and very carefully handled a few cut bits of wire; steel, silver, and copper.

“Copper’s no good,” Greg protested.

“I know what I’m doing.” He stood, braiding the wires together, never mind their differing lengths. At one end, the three wire strands were even, and he put them into his mouth, sucked on them. Offered them to Greg to do the same, eyes dark and serious.

Greg stared at him for a long moment, unable to read anything in his steady gaze. Then he ducked his head and took the ends in his own mouth, sucking until Mycroft pulled them from his lips.

Mycroft turned the water off and took off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves. He very carefully reached into the water, taking Greg’s hand in his own, and began scraping the wire along his skin, scouring it so gently it tickled, then tingled.

“Doesn’t that bother you at all?” Greg asked.

Mycroft looked at him sharply. “Of course it does. But it’s mostly mental, and I can bear it.”

He spent some time on the tips of Greg’s fingers, seeming to trace every whorl over three times, with each bit of wire.

“You shouldn’t hurt yourself for me,” Greg said. Muttered, really. Mycroft sighed and put the wires down at the side of the sink. He put his hand on the side of Greg’s face and kissed him, cool and sweet, biting gently at his lower lip and licking his teeth.

“Keep this up and I’ll fuck you here at the sink,” he warned.

Greg licked his lips. They tasted of the weakness and sickness that hadn’t yet left him. “I’m going to ask you another question.”

“Gregory.” Mycroft’s voice, cold as ice, very nearly answered it before he asked.

“If I gave myself to you, just to avoid that thing, would you accept?”

First there was silence, then absence. Greg tasted frost on his lips. The terrible feeling that both of them had gotten exactly what they no longer wanted.

*********

fin

**Author's Note:**

> Well I hope that was creepy enough for everyone.


End file.
